Interview

Reviving America's Animal Spirits

It has been a magical month for economist Dale Mortensen, though he's a practitioner of the dismal science. On Dec. 10, he and two fellow academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and London School of Economics were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their collaboration on mathematical models that gauge the "frictional" costs of the employment process for both job applicants and companies. Frictional costs refer to the total value of a transaction, ranging from resume preparation to opportunity costs. The model can likewise be applied to other markets characterized by heterogeneity,...